Leah Worthington (Lowcountry Digital History Initiative)

Leah Worthington is technically a librarian at the College of Charleston where she works to codirect both the Lowcountry Digital History Initiative and the Lowcountry Digital Library. She first came to the south to pursue her masters degree in History through the College of Charleston. Since the college did not offer a public history masters at the time she pursued internships with both of the programs she now helps direct alongside her degree in History in order to have a background that is fitting for her public history career. The Lowcountry Digital History Initiative is a collection of permanent online history exhibits and publications that tend to focus on more unrepresented history of the lowcountry. The Lowcountry Digital Library, though often confused, is different than the digital history initiative. The point of this program is to help make archives that store history about the lowcountry digital and accessible when the owner of the archive does not have the resources to do so themselves. What she days at the Digital History Initiative is manages the day to day operations. This includes finding authors to write for exhibits reading over said writings and working with graduate students to help them find pictures and write captions that can go along with exhibits as well. For the Digital Library the majority of her work has to do with verifying and digitizing the works that have to be put online so that they can be properly archived. When asked about why she chose these jobs in particular she explained some about public history. She told me how there was front of house work like giving tours on history and back of house work such as making sure information gets displayed. She said that, “I like the intellectual side of the backend or back of the house work” because of fact checking and making sure the public receives the right information. For the foreseeable future she plans to continue working on both of these projects and to constantly improve them.

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